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Can I ask what feature of the Kindle software beats makes it better than the Kindle? My experience is somewhat opposite that (although the Windows desktop app is admittedly very nice, and I have used that to read a few books) although I am coming from using the software on an iPhone 3g.

So you are alleging a conspiracy by every producer of dedicated ereaders with eink displays (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Cybook, and a hojillion others) to keep expensive new screens produced by the same company that makes the screens they currently are using out of their product lines?

...Why Romero or anything he says is still relevent?Yeah, he used to be kind of a big deal, but the last time he did anything relevant was Red Faction. If you really want to stress it then you could put down Area 51 but honestly Romero just seems to be a name these days.

That's wonderful as long as Amazon is still in business. Yeah, you can say that Amazon staying in business is probably a safe bet, but shit happens. For the average user unDRMing their already DRMed books isn't much of an option, and if Amazon goes tits up for some reason or decides to shut down their Kindle service then they can say byebye to all their stuff the second something happens to w/e devices they have their books on. DRM free content doesn't just let you access stuff across a number of devices now, it lets you actually hang onto your digital content past the life of w/e service and the life of whatever format it was in originally.

No, you can avoid a monopoly by going without it's services or products. You might end up either slightly inconvenienced, or living like a cave man, or dieing from some horrible disease because said monopoly makes some drug that you need to not die slowly and painfully, but you can avoid it.
Think "Matrix" with this. As long as you technically have a choice, it is all good and wholly acceptable. The second you don't, there are issues.
Of course, some of us live in the real world. Where "I can technically disassociate myself from these bastards" doesn't really work out to much of a choice.

Since the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, many gamers have been hopeful that its high budget, respected development team and rich universe will be enough to provide a real challenge to the WoW juggernaut. An opinion piece at 1Up makes the case that BioWare's opportunity to do so may have already passed. Quoting:
"While EA and BioWare Austin have the horsepower needed to at least draw even with World of Warcraft though, what we've seen so far has been worryingly conventional — even generic — given the millions being poured into development. Take the opening areas around Tython, which Mike Nelson describes in his most recent preview as being 'rudimentary,' owing to their somewhat generic, grind-driven quest design. Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi — what will surely be the most popular classes when The Old Republic is released. ... the real concern, though, is not so much in the quest design as in BioWare Austin's apparent willingness to play follow the leader. Whenever something becomes a big hit — be it a movie, game or book — there's always a mad scramble to replicate the formula; in World of Warcraft's case, that mad scramble has been going for six years now. "

...the same thing happened with Boxee and Hulu after Boxee supposedly had Hulu's blessing to integrate Hulu into Boxee. A little while later, Hulu Desktop was released. I guess the networks want people using their TVs to watch their on the actual TV channels.